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Google's super fast internet has turned Kansas City into an unlikely incubator for startups and tech entrepreneurs. One small neighborhood where a group is working on their ideas has been dubbed, the "Silicon Prairie." From the article: "The advantage here for startups is simple: A fast Internet pipe makes it easier to handle large files and eliminates buffering problems that plague online video, live conferencing or other network-intensive tasks. Though the Kansas City location presents challenges for startups, including the ability to raise money outside the traditional Silicon Valley venture capital scene, entrepreneurs like Synthia Payne believe it's the place to be right now for up-and-coming tech companies. Payne is one of those entrepreneurs hoping to launch her startup dream — an Internet subscription service for musicians who want to collaborate online — on the cheap. She shares the State Line Road house, known as the 'Home for Hackers,' with other startups under a deal that allows them to live rent-free while they develop their business plans."

"Kansas City" mostly means Kansas City Missouri, as well as the adjacent Kansas City Kansas and sprawl of suburbs. Sprint is in Overland Park, KS, a suburb about 10 miles west of downtown. Downtown KCMO is a pretty decent city - go visit the Plaza area or the university.

If I'm concerned about the data, I either encrypt it before transmitting or encrypt the pipe, both things you SHOULD BE DOING ANYWAY, regardless of who owns the last mile that happens to connect to your house/business.

end to end, if you are allowed to run encryption, that's fine. allowed, meaning that the dest site is also running it.

but given what I know of mitm attacks and faked certs, I don't trust encryption on the web and that lock icon on the browser. if you built your pc 100% and did not ever have any IT guy touch it, it might be safe. otoh, any company owned computer has to be assumed to have mitm certs preinstalled on it (trust me, I know this) and so you may even think your tunnel is private, but its really

Oh - you're suggesting that the companies we work for can spy on us. I agree. What's more, I think we should expect it. What's more, I think it is RIGHT. It is called work for a reason. What one does on their hardware on their time is their business. Their *business*.

I thought you were talking in the general case. ie. don't trust google fiber.

Seriously: why are you worried about google doing cable, and why do you think mitm attacks are possible when using encryption?

He's being overly paranoid. When he refers to MITM certs, he means that in theory, someone could have installed their own root certificate into ALL of your computer browsers, and then they could intercept your outbound SSL traffic. This is how SSL proxies work, but it requires you (or your IT) to install the trusted certs in the browser.

It is quite unlikely that this would ever happen, and is not difficult to detect and mitigate (remove the untrusted certs).

He's being overly paranoid. When he refers to MITM certs, he means that in theory, someone could have installed their own root certificate into ALL of your computer browsers, and then they could intercept your outbound SSL traffic. This is how SSL proxies work, but it requires you (or your IT) to install the trusted certs in the browser.

It is quite unlikely that this would ever happen, and is not difficult to detect and mitigate (remove the untrusted certs).

ahem, folks. its google fiber. how much privacy can you expect when THE company who wants to know 'all your shit' is the one laying and managing the network?

its bad enough that data passes thru google when you USE google. its horrible for a company that wants privacy and security (ie, startups) if ALL your data MUST pass thru google's wires.

is no one thinking of that? it would be like renting wires from the NSA. you think that would be a great idea, do you?

By "renting wires from the NSA", you are referring to Room 641A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A [wikipedia.org] which all your data goes through and actually is monitored by the NSA when you rent your wires from AT&T instead of renting them from Google, right?

Get over it! They know when you are sleeping, they know when you're awake, they know if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake! Or be bad. Practically they don't give a crap, for the most part.

But managing servers from your house can become much easier with a 1Gbps low latency connection.Find out that for some unfortunate reason you need to push an entire VM to the server farm? Not such a pain at 1Gbps. Or maybe it becomes faster to push a known working prebuilt machine to the farm than to rebuild it there (and hope it works the same). The farm provider may charge you more $$$ for the gigabytes of transfer, but it could still be worth it.

The whole point of this exercise, from Google's point of view, was to intimidate the monopolies into providing real connectivity. They don't want to be in the ISP business, but they also aren't going to sit idly by when those monopolies choke progress with high prices and poor bandwidth.

The whole point of this exercise, from Google's point of view, was to intimidate the monopolies into providing real connectivity. They don't want to be in the ISP business, but they also aren't going to sit idly by when those monopolies choke progress with high prices and poor bandwidth.

I don't believe there is any business Google doesn't want to be in.

And as much as I'd like to believe that Google will save us all from shitty ISPs, I think it will turn out much like it usually does when Google supplants an existing product/service. They bring a bizzare form of destruction that kills the competition but also radically changes consumer expectations of that type of service: i.e. they make everyone think X should be free or ultra cheap. See GMail, see Google Apps, see Google Voice, Books, Maps, etc.

Pretty much every product they put out makes it harder to convince people that type of prouct is worth paying for. Why pay dollars when you can just pay in privacy and screen-clutter? Google as an ISP is only going to convince people that a) bandwidth is limitless and b) It should cost next to nothing. Pray they don't alter that deal because there isn't anyone to supplant them.

The whole point of this exercise, from Google's point of view, was to intimidate the monopolies into providing real connectivity. They don't want to be in the ISP business, but they also aren't going to sit idly by when those monopolies choke progress with high prices and poor bandwidth.

Or for Google, being able to push more ads down your throat. After all, Google owns basically the entire online ad market by owning practically all the ad companies.

If Google manages to make money from their ISP stuff, it makes it harder to say "I can't make money 'giving away' gigabit internet connections at that price". And I think that's Google's plan - they're not going to subsidize it with their ad money, they're going to prove to the US people and the regulators that it's possible to make money doing what they do.I don't think Google really want to be in the ISP business, but their future plans depend on the USA having improved ubiquitous internet connectivity -

Within limits. Some are more resistant than non-monopolies, sure, especially when they've dug in with lobbyists as much as telecos have, but at the very least, they're vulnerable to lynch mobs.

Granted, a lynch mob of geeks upset that their internet connection was a thousand times slower than it could be probably wouldn't be the most intimidating thing in the world, but get enough of us together with burning keyboards...

Since the ISP market is geographically restricted, so an ISP in one location can't compete with an ISP in another location across the country. Therefore, you can say that each ISP is a geographically limited monopoly, so you have multiple monopolies.

Why is Kansas City an "unlikely incubator?" Because it's fucking Kansas City (no offense intended). Putting Google Fiber there will not change that. Look, I have been to KC, and enjoyed the hip downtown district thoroughly, etc. - but putting Google Fiber in any given town is not going to make it a good place to put technology businesses! Or has everyone magically forgotten Missouri's attitude towards teaching evolution in schools [huffingtonpost.com] just because Google bought some fiber there?

There are lots and lots of other places that have fast, cheap fiber. Slashdotters love to talk about how they have 50 Gbps Internet for $5/month in Sweden or free cloud-based dick-sucking anime robots in Korea or whatever. Yeah, we all get how much broadband access in the US sucks.

And yet... none of these magical places have somehow displaced the US and its terrible, awful, no-good Internet as the center of the tech world. Silicon Valley is still what it is due to the physical proximity of employers and investors. I love what Google Fiber is doing, but it isn't going to make anywhere else the new Silicon Valley, any more than all the other places in the world with cheaper Internet displaced that region before... which is to say "none."

Google FIber is not going to magically make anywhere a Mecca for technology. What really makes a place a tech center is a.) the tech companies that are already there are form an ecosystem; b.) the universities or other talent pools to draw from; c.) the local state or country's tax policies for residents/companies + immigration/visa policies for new entrants; and d.) the quality of the cultural, educational and political environment to attract new employees and their families to the area. Sadly, Kansas City does not excel on all four, whether cheap fiber is there or not. And if Google Fiber comes to your hometown of East Dead Cow Skull Texas, it doesn't mean that you will be able to attract tech companies either - sorry but it's the truth.

Why is Kansas City an "unlikely incubator?" Because it's fucking Kansas City (no offense intended). Putting Google Fiber there will not change that. Look, I have been to KC, and enjoyed the hip downtown district thoroughly, etc. - but putting Google Fiber in any given town is not going to make it a good place to put technology businesses! Or has everyone magically forgotten Missouri's attitude towards teaching evolution in schools [huffingtonpost.com] just because Google bought some fiber there?

There are lots and lots of other places that have fast, cheap fiber. Slashdotters love to talk about how they have 50 Gbps Internet for $5/month in Sweden or free cloud-based dick-sucking anime robots in Korea or whatever. Yeah, we all get how much broadband access in the US sucks.

And yet... none of these magical places have somehow displaced the US and its terrible, awful, no-good Internet as the center of the tech world. Silicon Valley is still what it is due to the physical proximity of employers and investors. I love what Google Fiber is doing, but it isn't going to make anywhere else the new Silicon Valley, any more than all the other places in the world with cheaper Internet displaced that region before... which is to say "none."

Google FIber is not going to magically make anywhere a Mecca for technology. What really makes a place a tech center is a.) the tech companies that are already there are form an ecosystem; b.) the universities or other talent pools to draw from; c.) the local state or country's tax policies for residents/companies + immigration/visa policies for new entrants; and d.) the quality of the cultural, educational and political environment to attract new employees and their families to the area. Sadly, Kansas City does not excel on all four, whether cheap fiber is there or not. And if Google Fiber comes to your hometown of East Dead Cow Skull Texas, it doesn't mean that you will be able to attract tech companies either - sorry but it's the truth.

Since when was "physical proximity" an issue when obtaining VC funding? What, do you think they still deliver the money by horse-drawn carriage? I suppose we'll have to wait weeks to get overseas talent, as they only travel by fucking sailboat.

A "tech center" can be built with a damn forum online. And I've probably gathered more good information that way in the last 5 years than I have in the previous 30.

We (as in the US) perhaps remain the center of the tech world regardless of our shitty internet speed

Proximity to employees is also important. Silicon Valley and San Francisco are _surrounded_ by universities so there's a lot of academia-industry interactions going on there. Besides, you also need support staff: marketing, legal, business development, etc. It's possible to interact with them remotely, but it's yet another hurdle that's absent in San Francisco/Silicon Valley.

I don't have strong views either for or against teaching evolution, but how is that attitude even remotely relevant as to whether MO or KS are good places in which to set up tech companies? It's certainly better than the stratospheric costs of the Santa Clara Valley.

More or less suprisingly tech companies need educated, taletented and skilled people to work for them. The vast majority of them would take offense in the idea of evolution not being taught in schools. This would be a showstopper for them to move to that certain place. In other words: this removes alot of people from the pool of possible hires...

Again, what does evolution have to do w/ whether someone understands how to code or program? I don't recall ever being asked in interviews what I thought about the evolution of man. It would have been about as relevant as asking me what I thought about feminism, or gay rights

it would be one thing if a school had no money and could simply not educate people. this is not the case here; in this case, they have all the funding they need but they CHOOSE to follow jesus over science. every single time.

for people like me, that would be a show-stopper. I would not want my kids indoctrinated in that! people usually go out of their ways to find 'the right school districts'. well, going to a fundie place like kansas is like se

If they're looking for educated, talented, skilled people, they're probably looking at college graduates. And Missouri hasn't banned teaching of evolution in colleges, at least not recently. Why would the startups give a flying fuck where the students went to high school or grade school? Science education in high school sucks nationwide.

at the end of the day, you go home and live next door to those folks who buy-in to the programming that the flyover states are known for. extreme fundamentalism does not mix well, culturally, with the folks who currently run silicon valley.

'what church do you go to? oh, you don't. hmmm. what's wrong with you??'

sorry, but I refuse to live among that style of living.

similarly, I would not relocate to the deep south. same exact reason, too.

Having lived in KC, the deep south, and civilized big cities, I can tell you that the differences are more "city vs rural" than "Kansas City vs other moderately sized city." You might have more religious people, but it's DEFINITELY not anything like rural Alabama. Kansas City is firmly blue. You'll see more pro-life signs driving from Kansas City to St. Louis than you would San Francisco to LA, but your neighbors will not be much more likely to judge you for being atheist than any other state.

Google Fibre is an enabler. This is part of the reason I believe in government funded internet infrastructure, which is leased out to private entities. The format I would imagine is each company leasing would pay for a access to a frequency band, and would have their own hardware in the main hub, so that they aren't impacted by data usages of other competing companies.

This reduces the risk for the private entities, encourages competition and gets them to compete with better prices and services. The only people that this can be bad for is the monopolies, for everyone else a healthier market develops.

I moved to KC a couple years ago, working remotely for a company in Dallas. I've since switched jobs to a local. I don't know how far along it is to becoming a technology mecca, but I could leave my job today and have a couple offers by next week.

When I first moved up here, the job boards seemed dead, but that's certainly not the case now. It's obviously not Silicon Valley, but I think its got a healthy tech economy.

I truly do hope so. Where I live, outside of Huntsville, AL, the best connection I can buy (outside of the satellite stuff from CES this year) is 3,000/348 DSL. That is pathetic. I've a friend in Norway, on an island in the arctic circle that has 25,000/5,000 and pays 1/3 of what I do. I really hope Google or SOMEONE takes this and runs with it.

Burlington Telecom is offering 1Gb symmetrical service in Burlington,VT for $150/month; which is quite a bit more expensive than the Google Fiber in Kansas City, but Burlington is a much smaller town.

I've started an initiative called BTV Gig [btvgig.org] with the goal of leveraging gigabit Internet speeds for the benefit of the community of Burlington, Vermont. If you haven't already heard of it, you may want to check it out. We had a Gigabit Salon last month with over 30 people sharing ideas on how we can leverage this network to benefit our community. We're working on a report documenting how we can take this initiative forward and have some other events in the works.

Most small businesses don't run servers these days. They use Google Mail for their email, and they host their website in a server farm somewhere. So rules against servers don't exactly prevent business use....

Our Terms of Service prohibit running a server. However, use of applications such as multi-player gaming, video-conferencing, home security and others which may include server capabilities but are being used for legal and non-commercial purposes are acceptable and encouraged.

Inquiries to Google about Business being allowed to connect to Google Fiber have been rejected. They are simply not offering their services to Business clients at this time. That doesn't tell us why, but does say that they pretty much don't want you running a business server on the connection. Your MS Home Server, that's likely a different matter.

I'd be happy to enjoy a 1Gbps connection, but I'd need real pay (not the startup promise of pay later) and probably relocation assistance. As a long time Windows hacker who specializes in OS/apps rollouts, migrations, etc, I've got skills but even I can't feed my household on promises. Anyone serious feel free to contact me for my resume, I'm not happy with the tech industry in the Detroit area. (although I'm thinking about Ann Arbor so I can stay fairly close to family/friends);) - HEX

The problem with a lot of Google innovations is that Google likes to beta the shit out of it and often likes to call it quits when they figure out that they don't know how to monetize it. What will the entrepreneurs do when Google decides that they do not want to continue dealing with the keeping their black fiber alive in Kansas City?.
Those entrepreneurs will be stuck with zilch or with whatever new price structure is set by google or whomever follows them!

yep, if they can afford to relocate to Kansas City, guess what, they can probably afford to buy or get a mortage on a $48000 house for themselves just as easily. So I agree with you that there's not as much a draw to this for those not already in KC. And yeah, google pulls out, they can cable themselves in. But if they'd counted on gigabit access to perform their "high-speed-needing" services, they're going to have to fork out a lot more later, as the 100mbit cable access won't cut it.

Read the contract? Seems like buisiness 101. If you pay to have the fiber installed at your house, you're guaranteed seven years of broadband speed internet connection at no additional cost. If you're starting a buisiness, and you don't bother to get some guarantees that service won't skip out suddenly, then you're asking to lose a lot of money.

This is actually an Associated Press article by Maria Sudekum. See this link. [yahoo.com] Indiatimes.com didn't give credit to Maria or AP, which may mean they just snatched and reposted the content. I like to see the original author credited and let her reputation be affected (good or bad) by the quality of her work.

You're very unlikely to be allowed to run servers off of it and when has the biggest obstacle to a startup been "dang, i have to wait 5 seconds instead of 1 to download this massive thing"?

I was thinking the same thing. Plus, if your business plan is so sensitive to speed and performance... why doesn't the speed and performance at the user end (where Google Fiber isn't) matter as well? They (the "startups" and their supporters) don't seem to have actually thoug

Seriously? I don't think you've thought this through well. If you offer a service that uses 56KB/ps for each client, then obviously each of your customers can have a good connection, but you as the provider need a connection with enough throughput to accommodate all of your clients.

No shit Sherlock. When you get a clue about the 'net though, you'll realize there are many more limitations on bandwidth and latency than the host computer - which was the point of both myself and the original poster.

This is just another instance of a subsidy swindle. Some organization, usually a city/county/state, offers funding/tax breaks/business space to attract new business. The target is always something glittery and/or high tech: internet, biotech, film. As soon as the subsidy ends, everyone leaves. Typically there is no earthly reason for the location to have the business in the first place. If there was, there would already be that kind of activity going on.

Film production is the poster child for this stuff. There are film production companies who never do any projects. All they do is get subsidies, lure investors, and never really make films. I head a tail about some producers who set up a company in Minnesota when they offered matching funds for equipment purchased in state. The production execs all bought fancy SUVs for "location scouting" for essentially half price. Then when the subsidy ended, they closed their office and drove off in their fancy cars.

There are two things about Google Fiber in Kansas City that are interesting to note:

1.) Kansas City (and the midwest) has a low cost of living, making the idea of boot strapping your own startup without lots of Venture Capital possible.

2.) Google Fiber isn't available to business at this time, which means that if you're not at a home address, you can't get it. I'm just not sure why that is, since one of the benefits of getting enough people intersted in the project in your neck of the woods means when it comes in, various NPO's such as the KC Public Library or Union Station will get a Google Fiber feed for free.

Google Fiber isn't available to business at this time, which means that if you're not at a home address, you can't get it. I'm just not sure why that is

I suspect the problem is figuring out how to price it and what terms to offer.

For home users they just make it unmetered, ban using it to run servers (a ban which I suspect will be selectively enforced) and operate on the understanding that the vast majority of users (hell even the vast majority of hoarder-pirates) won't come anywhere close to maxing out a gigabit connection on a long term basis but buisnesses will want the ability to run servers and one buisness premisis could contain tens or even hundreds

If Google Fiber for Business is going to put some limits on it, I would rather see them move towards a number of users, opposed to metering. 1-25 employees/users, 26-100 employees/users, 101-500 employees/users, 501-1000 employees/users, etc..

That would encourage smaller business, start ups, and so forth, stimulate them, but give them room to effectively grow things as business clients pick up more employees/users.

1) There's quality of life issues that really do offset the low cost of living. Weather, education, entertainment, etc. It's hard to explain but over time it begins to have a significant impact on one's psyche. (Btw, I'm speaking as a transplant from a blue state to a red state years ago.)

2) Perhaps this is due to some local licensing issues? There have been a number of articles on Arstechnica detailing how various telecos have been trying to quash local municipal bro

When can we stop posting all this PR/crap/ about Kansas City and Google Fiber? Surely Google has plenty of money to advertise what they're doing. There are countless other cities out there that are doing the same thing, even BEFORE Google got out of the gate but you don't see those mentioned here on/.? Why's that? Is it maybe because the word Chattanooga doesn't draw eyeballs like Google does?
For reference:
http://www.thegigcity.com/geekmove/ [thegigcity.com]

If the cost of high speed internet is what's keeping you from getting started then you have a pretty weak business model. Compared to salaries and the myriad of other overhead costs decently priced internet are hardly the main concern.

I grew up in KC, went to collage at RPI in New York and spent some time working in Boston. I've done a lot of traveling both inside and outside the U.S. and I think Kansas City gets a bum rap.

Many people from the coasts have such bias against KC (and all the other cities in "fly-over" country), but it is actually a pretty hip city. I've eaten some of the best food of my life here [bluestemkc.com] and here [extravirginkc.com]. The Chicago Tribune recently called Kansas City "America's Next Great Cocktail City. We have tons of fine art thea